According to recent reports, there has been a rise in COVID-19 cases. In Mississippi, there have been 4,075 new positive test results, according to the Mississippi Department of Health’s (MSDH) most recent data.
“Our COVID numbers are up slightly, but not a whole lot,” said Tyler Holmes Memorial Hospital’s COVID-19 Vaccine Infectious Disease nurse, Leslie Sultan, “and we’ve recently had more ER visits.”
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cites weekly trends in cases that show that while at the beginning of 2022, during the week of Jan. 19, there were 5,630,296 cases reported throughout the U.S., during the week of Dec. 21, 487,367 cases were reported.
There has been a slight rise, but overall numbers suggest that COVID-19 cases are still lower than July number peaks, which reached a high at 837,192 during the week of July 27, according to the CDC.
According to the MSDH website, there have not been any COVID-19 related deaths in Carroll or Montgomery County since the month of September 2022.
“[COVID cases] might rise a little more due to people gathering for the holidays, but both Carroll and Montgomery counties are categorized as low by the MSDH—meaning that our services are not overwhelmed,” Sultan continued.
While recent spikes in the numbers included a high of 1,429 cases reported statewide on Dec. 15, the numbers have once again dropped down into the low hundreds.
With the current COVID-19 case number securely below 5,000, the current population of Mississippi puts the case numbers in perspective.
According to the United States Census Bureau, Mississippi has approximately 2,904,057 residents. That means that about .0005 percent of Mississippi residents currently have COVID-19.
Of those cases, 14 deaths have been listed as being “COVID-related” on the MSDH website for the month of December.
